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Clouds and Sun

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Cloudy days remove my strength. Though the rain replenishes the earth and the soil, the grey skies sap me dry.  However, when the sun breaks through and the clouds are pierced with light, I feel my strength return, at least this is what it feels like sometimes.    Life comes in stages, though we  aren’t  acting on  a stage . Our hearts, like the sky above, sometimes are grey with weariness. We need the light to breakthrough to feel alive again.  Life stages come quickly, often without  a warning . Age rolls over us like a giant wheel headed downhill. We are thinned out by this process like dough  under a pin roller. We cry to God for mercy and sometimes in His wisdom  He lets us be rolled, stretched  almost until  we break.  The skies seem dark and we feel alone. The grey clouds press against us like a hand  until we are flat. The grey and the stages—or  maybe these  are just the stages  of greying ? ...
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Into the Dark

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It is hard to see in the dark. Most people would agree with me about this. When there is no light to  see,  we  must  incor porate our other senses to get where we need to go:  touch, smell, etc.  As we grope in the dark, we hope to find the exit to where the light is.  However, the process of being unaware of where we are or how we are to get where we are going is truly frustrating and a little scary.    In many ways our interaction with God is like this. It is like  being in  a dark room where we cannot see the way forward unless we use our other se nses that are sharper in the absence of sight.  This other sense is like faith; we can put our fingers around God s o-to-speak , but it  is n’t  with our hands. Our interactions are  innately  spiritual;  there is no physical dimension to this sensing. God is spirit and not made of the same stuff that we are.  We feel God, but it is often like a cool ...
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The Anchor

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I remember the days of old;   I meditate on all that you have done;   I ponder the work of your hands.   I stretch out my hands to you; my  soul  thirsts for  you like a parched land.   ( Psalm   143:5-6 ESV ) When life is hard and the waves keep slamming into us, our anchor is in our history with God. Usually when the waves  hit, we tend to only see them and the destruction they are causing  all around us  and we forget that we  aren’t  alone.  When the pain is loud, our awareness of God can dim. This isn’t due to sin; it’s due to focus.  When we  hurt,  we are usually not foc using on God, we are focusing on the pain. When  we  were  children and  fell  and  tripped ,  scrap ping  our knees, we  d idn’t   think about our parents  who were walking next to us;   at  that moment   we  were  thinking about the cut  and...
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Holy Thunder

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When we hear the word “holy ”,  what images pop into our heads? Do we think of  a stereotypical  stuffy church lad y  wearing conserv ative dress  and judging you for your music tastes? Do we think of an angry street preacher calling fire down on his enemies who happen to be everyone  with in earshot  of his diatribe ?  Is it a building? Is it a book? Our thoughts and images about  these  concepts that are central to the story of Scripture are important . T hey can either be a help or  hindrance to drawing closer to God. The above images  will   probably  c ause  us to run far away from Him.   However, the word that translates to holy in English is the Hebrew word “ K adosh ” ,  meaning “otherness” or “set apartness ”.  It is not a word that means moral perfection or  religiosity as we tend to think  it does . God  is  morally  perfect but  that’s  not the prima r...
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